Daily Archives: January 21, 2015

The Xylouris clan.

The film captures how music is passed on from father to son to grandchildren, in a contemporary Greek Australian family, brought together and separated by their love of music.

A short version of the film, entitled Sounds Like Home was aired on ABC Australia in October 2013 and the feature-length documentary premiered on January 8, 2015, in Athens, Greece. The film’s production was made possible by a successful Kickstarter campaign in March 2014, which helped to cover initial shooting in Australia and trigger the support of ABC TV Australia, the Greek Film Centre and OTE-TV, and most recently NERIT, the Greek public broadcaster.

The music on the soundtrack is performed by George Xylouris, his three children Nikos, Antonis and Appolonia, as well as their legendary grandfather, Psarantonis.

The soundtrack also features recordings with drummer Jim White and the Xylouris and Hannan family friends in Crete and Australia. The music for the film had already been recorded, but in order to create an audio album, the tracks had to be mastered to stand alone at their absolute best. This meant studio time and talented technicians to produce a shining album.

The team is collaborating with Coti K, an established musician, composer, record producer and sound engineer based in Athens, who has been working with sound and music since the 1980s. His work includes collaborations with Tuxedomoon, Stereo Nova, Blaine Reininger, The Raining Pleasure, Nikos Veliotis and Ilios.

The group entered kickstarter and the project was successfully funded on January 6. The film and soundtrack are to enter the Australian distribution market within February and March.

For more information visit www.facebook.com/XylourisFamily?ref=hl or afamilyaffair.gr/

source: neoskosmos.com

Dow Chemical chief, Andrew Liveris.

Andrew Liveris, 60, was born in Darwin, to Greek parents. He is one of Australias’s most successful businessmen, and for that he received an Order of Australia, which was announced on Australia Day, earlier this year. Liveris received his award during a subtle but emotional ceremony at Government House in Canberra, attended by his Australian born wife and two of three adult children.

Dow Chemical Company chairman and chief executive is a man of great personal significance, with a heavy say on President Obamas’ Business Roundtable as co-chair, serving as a trustee for the United States Council for International Business, chairman of IBM, while being an active member of the Special Olympics’ International Board. Liveris makes sure Dow’s yearly revenues reach up to $60 billion, sky-rocketing the colossus in Fortune’s top 50 of US companies.

His late grandfather migrated to Australia in 1915 and never left. Andrew Liveris grew up in Darwin, in a neighbourhood where he’d play on the streets amongst many children of different nationalities, something that helped him form his multidimensional personality. He grew up as a Greek, but as an Australian as well, and learned to respect and co-exist with different cultures; think outside the box. He managed to balance his Anglo-Saxon education with his Greek Orthodox upbringing and rise up the global ladder of success straight to the top, even if it wasn’t his original plan.

Liveris started out as a clerk working for Dow, soon after completing his studies on Chemical Engineering at the University of Queensland. It did not take him long to be offered a regional role in Hong Kong. He accepted the overseas job, which he thought would be temporary, hoping to return to Australia as General Manager of Dow Australia Operations. He began to get promoted within the company, which clearly meant his potential was being acknowledged and his ground-breaking views on free markets and low-cost manufacturing. He eliminated all other candidates he came across and became chief executive on 2004. Since 2006, he has been the chairman of the company, articulating and advocating on its behalf.

Andrew Liveris knows the risks that lie with the commodification of innovations in the chemical industry, and always tries to be one step ahead of trends and investments. What his financial incentive in dealing with conglomerate enterprises has taught him, he is seriously thinking of sharing while pursuing a career in politics, which could follow his retirement from Dow. A return to Sydney, where he owns property, would add the silver lining to his success.

source:neoskosmos.com

500,000 Greeks living abroad corresponds to around 7-8 per cent of the valid ballot in the most recent elections.

Once more, Greeks living abroad will not be able to vote in the parliamentary elections from their place of residence, including Australia.

Petros Papakalos, a lawyer and a linguist in the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxemburg, hit the nail on the head about how the Greeks of the diaspora feel. During the previous election, Papakalos started a worldwide campaign which became viral. Unfortunately, his campaign is still relevant.

“Successive Greek governments never seriously bothered to ensure the exercise of this right. They usually approached the issue with the prospect of enlarging their electoral clientele, by considering to grant voting rights to second, third and fourth generation Greek immigrants in the US, Australia and elsewhere,” Papakalos said.

“Instead, they could have done the realistic minimum of giving the ability to exercise that right to those with Greek nationality who are already registered on the electoral rolls.

“I know the objections. ‘Why do you want to have a say when you no longer live in Greece?’ And this comes from people who welcome the right to vote in the grandfather’s or great-grandfather’s electoral district by people who live in Attica for decades. Perhaps they think that migration implies disenfranchisement. Ignoring that some of us continue to be taxed in Greece, and also to have assets, care for the future, and for the future of our family and friends,” Papakalos points out.

Greece is probably the only EU country that does not provide its expatriate citizens with the opportunity to vote in embassies and consulates (or even the possibility of postal voting).

In addition to the above, many of the Greek voters who are excluded from the electoral process live temporarily abroad (e.g. students), while all those who are registered in electoral rolls count as abstention, unless they travel to Greece and vote – at least 500,000, which corresponds to around 7-8 per cent of the valid ballot in the most recent elections. And that’s without counting second and third generation expatriate Greeks.

“Combined with the bonus of 50 parliamentary seats to the winning party, the exclusion of 100,000 first-time voters, and an unknown number of voters who live away from their constituency and can’t apply on time to transfer their electoral rights, the result is a significant alteration of popular will – to the extent that the phrase ‘democratically elected government’ ceases to have a meaning,” he concludes.

*Nikolaos Stampoulopoulos is founder and creative director of New Diaspora.

source:neoskosmos.com

Yanis Varoufakis: Greece’s next finance minister? Photo: ABC.

Yanis Varoufakis, perhaps the most recognisable global commentator on the Greek crisis, shared his thoughts – and fears – this week on becoming a SYRIZA candidate in the Greek election.

Varoufakis – of dual Greek and Australian citizenship and Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Athens – has analysed the reasons for Greece’s economic turmoil since the crisis began; a situation which he lays squarely at the door of the troika’s “cynical” bailout terms and a failure of the Greek government to contest enforced austerity measures.

If SYRIZA wins at the polls next Sunday there’s little doubt that Varoufakis will play a role in attempting to implement SYRIZA’s radical economic agenda – which includes debt renegotiation and cancelling the austerity measures which underpin Greece’s 240 billion euro bailout.

Speaking to Russia Today this week, Varoufakis admitted that his arrival in the political arena (he will run in Athens’ B’ Athinon electorate – a sprawling, largely working-class constituency) was the result of an offer he simply couldn’t refuse.

“Alexis Tsipras invited me, if there is a SYRIZA government, to participate in an attempt to implement the policies I have been advocating,” said the former University of Sydney lecturer.

“For five years now I’ve been putting forward alternative proposals to the ones that have been implemented.

“It was morally and politically impossible to turn down such an offer, even though I dread it.”

On announcing his candidature, Varoufakis said his greatest fear was that he would turn into a politician.

“As an antidote to that virus, I intend to write my resignation letter and keep it in my inside pocket, ready to submit it the moment I sense signs of losing the commitment to speak truth to power.”

Confidante of Varoufakis, Melbourne University professor Nikos Papastergiadis, told Neos Kosmos that his friend’s reticence to engage in Greek politics was a good sign.

“I don’t doubt he’s doing this reluctantly, but that’s the best kind of politician. The one who does it with zealousness and enthusiasm, you suspect their motivations may be anything but pure.”

“He’s squeaky clean and he represents this intellectual, more moral, enlightened approach towards politics.”

While Varoufakis was a former advisor to PASOK, Papastergiadis says running for Greece’s once dominant social-democratic party would never have been an option.

“Yanis was close to Papandreou, but he would have never considered running for PASOK. With SYRIZA it’s a different historical moment.”

Speaking to Neos Kosmos this week, Helena Smith, The Guardian’s correspondent in Athens, said that Varoufakis had every chance of electoral success.

“B’ Athinon is considered very tough to win a seat in, but I am told by the best of sources that his superstar status in popularising the economy for ordinary Greeks will ensure that he does get elected.”

Varoufakis’ consistent line in recent months has been to say that while the Greek state has managed to eliminate the country’s primary deficit – “at huge expense and social cost to the population”, Greece’s insolvency will remain until European-wide reforms and the EU’s “fiscal water-boarding” are challenged.

“The EU and the IMF, in their wisdom, decided to unload a very large loan upon very weak Greek shoulders on condition of austerity that shrinks income. So extend and pretend,” said the potential SYRIZA finance minister.

“And as we all know with the ‘extend and pretend’ strategy, you don’t overcome bankruptcy, you deepen it, and project it into the future.

“We now have the possibility of redemption on the 25th of January with a new government.”

source:neoskosmos.com

Swinburne University PhD student Emily Petroff discovered the cosmic burst.

An Australian scientist has become the first person to witness a burst of radio waves, coming from an unknown source billions of light years away, arrive at Earth in real time.

Swinburne University PhD student Emily Petroff watched the fast radio burst, which lasted about a millisecond but gave off as much energy as the Sun does in a day, using the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales.

The first burst was discovered by chance in 2007 by astronomers combing the Parkes data archive. Six more bursts have been found by Parkes since and a seventh by the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico.

Illustration of the Parkes radio telescope receiving the polarised signal from the new fast radio burst. Photo: Swinburne Astronomy Productions

 

“These bursts were generally discovered weeks, months or even more than a decade after they happened,” Ms Petroff said in a statement.

“We are the first to catch one in real time.”

Little is known about the radio waves, but the latest signal indicates that whatever caused it is giant, cataclysmic and up to 5.5 billion light years away.

Astronomers across the globe are now trying to explain the mysterious phenomenon.

CSIRO head of astrophysics Dr Simon Johnston said one of the front-running ideas is that a neutron star collapsed to form a black hole.

“If we can see that happening, it gives off a big flash of radio waves from the far, distant universe, and that’s really very exciting,” Dr Johnston told the ABC.

In another first, the burst was detected by telescopes across the world, at Australia, California, the Canary Islands, Chile, Germany, Hawaii, and India.

Ms Petroff said identifying the origin of the bursts is only a matter of time.

“We’ve set the trap. Now we just have to wait for another burst to fall into it.”

source:theage.com.au